Intel Developer Forum Andy Grove, president of Intel, emphasised today that the Internet has fundamentally changed the business model and focus of the company. The conference, which is being attended by 3181 delegates, is the seventh since Intel started the bi-annual jamboree over three years ago, and Grove said that the difference between the company then and now could best be described by the term powers of ten. He said: "We had operated with a clear model of efficiency for 15 years and we've adapted to become a building block company. These are nice words, but they're just words. Our world has changed to something that's difficult to depict." Grove showed the spread of products which Intel now sells, including the usual spread of notebooks, desktops and servers but also now Web appliances, switches, routers, set top boxes and switching devices. He said that while five years ago the computer or PC model was based on productivity software and games, today the whole model had been changed by the Internet. "The rate of growth we are dealing with in the Internet is driven by powers of ten," he said. Grove then introduced senior representatives of search engine Google, eToys and Commerce One to demonstrate the rates of change involved. This was part of Grove's way to position the Itanium (Merced) processor and Intel's 64-bit architecture as the basic engine for Internet transactions. The different companies described how the Internet had both moulded and changed their business models. It is no coincidence that all three of these companies seem to use Intel servers in their companies -- and will use IA64 in the future. The three companies represent what Grove described as the key Internet markets of information, transactions and markets, including integrated supply chain. There were parallels with previous experience with the PC industry, and the same dynamics of collaboration and competition, and the ability to use the broad distribution methods the Internet brings would allow Intel to continue to expand, Grove said. Grove then introduced Albert Yu, a senior vice president at Intel, who showed Willamette silicon and then demonstrated it running at 1.5GHz. ®